Tesla hunts for driverless-vehicle expert

Tesla’s in the market for an autonomous driving engineer, someone who will likely bring some of those great hands-free features to its electric cars in the future.

The company put out a call for applicants on its careers page today for an “Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Control Engineer,” or ADAS. The applicant will perform a research role, looking at how to add autonomous features and working with the “firmware team” to actually put this research into action.

These kinds of features include “automotive engine, braking, and steering controls interfaces.” We’ve already seen this in a number of luxury cars, as Wired notes. More specifically, the technology can keep your car safe distances from others when in cruise control and also keep you within a lane without driver participation.

But Tesla could also be joining a number of companies who say they will create their own fully autonomous (aka “driverless” cars within the next 10 years. Many have already seen the Google driverless car on the road, but in order for these innovations to end up in production models, existing car companies need to jump on the bandwagon (which we assume can drive itself).

The applicant must be familiar with a range of sensors associated with driverless vehicles and must otherwise have five years in the business.